In the Year of 2002, I visited Kunshan, China. There I met a group of ethnic Hui (Chinese muslims) who were once coal-miners in Xinjiang. After having befriended these people, I requested to learn their language. They told me that, the ethnic Hui of their group do not have a language of their own (unless one would consider the Qur'aanic Arabic as a valid candidate); however, they offered to teach me a form of Uyghur which they would use with their follow Uyghur coal-miners. After some studies, I have realised this so-called Uyghur dialect is not Uyghur, but rather, an Uyghur Creole.

This Uyghur Creole has lost some of the unique turkic vowels and, uses the base vowels of "A" "E" "Ee" "O" "Ou" ("Ou" sounds as the "oo" in "MooN"). The "R" of this Uyghur Creole is always trilled, no matter which position in a word it appears. This Uyghur Creole's grammar is a mixture of Chinese and Uyghur rules as one can expect. The followings are some of the phrases and words of this Uyghur Creole:

The word "ourom" means "seat" and, when wishing to ask "are there any seats left?", we would say "ourom banma?". The word "ba" means "have" whilst "banma" makes it a question. If shall there are no seats left, one may say "ourom yak" which means "no seats". However, shall there be seats available for taking, one may direct the guests by saying "ba, a outro" of which, means "yes, sit here".

In this Uyghur Creole, one would say "yahmatee" for "thank you" instead of the Standard Uyghur's "rehmet". They call a boy as "balanzi" whilst a girl as "yangganzi" instead of the Uyghur's "oghul" and "kiz", one may also notice the word "balanzi" originated from Standard Uyghur's "bala" of which, means "child".

Sobekhotep wrote:It's interesting that this pidgin developed, instead of them (the Hui & Uyghurs) just speaking Mandarin with each other.

Indeed it is interesting, and thus, the reason for introducing it here. There are many theories as well as confirmed reasons of this pidgin's creation; however, many are semi-political influenced ideas of which, I will refrain from discussing them here.

It has come to my realisation that, this Uyghur Pigin has a certain elements from Sibe language (of which is a type of the Manchu language). Since the Sibe settled themselves in Uyghurstan (Xinjiang), this Tugusic influence upon this Uyghur Pigin is very possible.

The word for girl in this pigin is "yangganzi of which, is actually from the Manchu-Sibe vocabulary 【ᡶᡳᠶᠠᠨᡤᡤᠠ】fiyangga, of which means "beautiful" or "charming".

The Turkic languages are one of my least studied language families, although I think Turkish itself is fascinating. I somehow lump all Turkish languages together (soft of like Scandinavian languages, but truly, how close are they? I'd like this answered by a native or someone who is very familiar with the family. Can an Uzbek read aTurkish newspaper?? Can a Kazakh understand a Turkish conversation? I'üe met quite a few Turks who say those languages are like Chinese to them, but I always sensed a tone of derision and they may not have been completely truthful (for political reasons probably)

formiko wrote:The Turkic languages are one of my least studied language families, although I think Turkish itself is fascinating. I somehow lump all Turkish languages together (soft of like Scandinavian languages, but truly, how close are they? I'd like this answered by a native or someone who is very familiar with the family. Can an Uzbek read aTurkish newspaper?? Can a Kazakh understand a Turkish conversation? I'üe met quite a few Turks who say those languages are like Chinese to them, but I always sensed a tone of derision and they may not have been completely truthful (for political reasons probably)

I'm not a native or fluent speaker of any Turkic language nor am I an expert but I'll reply anyway. The Turkic languages are subdivided in to several groups: Arghu, Kypchak, Oghur, Oghuz, Siberian, & Uyghuric. Generally, mutual intelligibility is limited to within each group. For example, Turkish, Azerbaijani & Turkmen are all Oghuz languages & there is strong mutually intelligibility. Uyghur & Uzbek are both Uyghuric but mutual intelligibility is a bit weaker mainly because Uzbek has been bombarded with Persian, specifically Tajik, influence. Kazakh & Kyrgyz are also close, but this also because of language convergence.In general, a monolingual Turkish speaker probably wouldn't be able to converse with a monolingual Uyghur or Tatar speaker & definitely not with a Chuvash or Tuvan speaker.Reading is also an issue, because many Turkic languages use different scripts. While Turkish & Azerbaijani use primarily Latin, Uyghur uses primarily Arabic while Kazakh & Kyrgyz use Cyrillic.